NB
1. Visiting VT schools without first understanding what VT is. This makes schools susceptible to being unable to tell good practice from bad practice. This is a training/knowledge issue.
2. This is often followed by using a local school to tell staff 'all about their version of VT'. There are no versions! Thus staff are not properly briefed and trained. This is a CPD quality issue and is old management. The school LT attempts to do the training rather than the leading. this always means system mistakes and these can be expensive
3. Schools try and make VT 'their own' or adapt VT. This is OK but schools need to realise that VT is built on values and management principles that don't flex easily. VT has to be managed. Innovation comes later! A VT system is quite tight and values driven alongside systems thinking
4. Schools need to reduce tutor group size usually by dividing the number of students by the number of rooms. This must not be based on friendship patterns but group balance. Schools often ignore this as a sop to parents and students. This is weak management and naive
5. The way students engage with their new tutor for the first time is critical and does not involve a VT launch day or indeed a vertical session. This is a critical aspect that schools so easily mess up
6. Schools must adopt the idea of lead tutors being chosen from all staff regardless of their status and their role in the school. No-one joins the school without being trained and expected to be a tutor. This applies to NTS (non teaching staff) too. Critically the tutors must understand their role at a deep level
7. Tutor time should never be at the start of the day, after lunch or at the end of the day. Guess what's left...
8. Tutors do not teach programmes or deliver PSHE / SEAL and Citizenship. VT is SEAL (social and emotional support for learning). This does not mean they cannot all engage with an issue at the same time as needed.
9. The school must identify critical times when school and family and tutee meet to analyse student performance and identify strategies for improvement. The tutor is the Leader of Learning and heads the front office. Academic tutorial days or weeks are not appropriate because critical times for learning support appear at critical times throughout the school year
10. Academic tutorials or DLCs (deep learning conversations involving parents, tutees, tutors take about 40 minutes each and do not occur on a single day but within a single week. NO review days
11. Tutors need about 20/25 minutes a day. Building in tutorial time throughout the year as an alternative is bad practice and inappropriate
12. Head of House (HOH)/ College must work from the same team area to ensure coherence. Separate offices will create old cultural ways. HOH also take the lead in visiting teaching classes.
13. Training HOH is critical and only one person should mange this team. Schools should not attach an Assistant Headteacher to each House. Job profiles can be obtained via this site as requested.
14. It is OK to have NTS as HOH. It is not OK if horizontal Heads of School and Year continue in their role. This can never be VT. Some staff try to cling on to their power bases and weak Heads tolerate this and so compromise VT and outcomes.
15. VT is not just a change to the pastoral system. VT unites pastoral and academic within the tutor role.
16. Year 7 must never be left out of a VT system ever! Sixth forms should always be involved whenever possible.
17. Meeting tutees for an hour once a week or as individuals for an hour once a week for 'academic mentoring'. (See Vertigo articles where two schools explain how to mess up VT!!)
System Mistakes and their Avoidance
Shukla's analyses of organisations that fail, indicate problems in leadership; in particular, ignorance and arrogance. Set out below are some of the system mistakes that schools make. Many schools refuse to recognise that these (below) are system errors. Some schools (a few) even revert back to year systems claiming VT doesn't work when it is really a problem with their own understanding and implementation (no training). The big danger facing schools that try and transform to VT is the paranoia of old management culture and a tendency to either reinvent the past or to remain prisoners of orthodoxy and factory schooling. VT really does give schools a sense of freedom, control and a re-energised ability to innovate.
Set out below are some of the key issues and system errors. These require some explanation: contact us for any explanation. Please feel free to use this site for further information and to have your questions answered. Schools are publishing all sorts of variations on the web eg advice to parents, organisation etc which veers away from the fundamental values and principles of VT...so take great care!!
NEVER CREATE TUTOR GROUPS BASED ON FRIENDSHIP: this is a complete misunderstanding of VT and how VT works